I think that no one can say that your marriage, or life is ruined because of negative consequences due to premarital sex. In fact, the Lord can use all things for His good. I was struck with this, and in a sense the injustice just this weekend. My husband is from a large family. His parents did foster care and ended up adopting a teenage boy who is now in his early 20s. This step brother often gets in to trouble and sleeps around and got his girlfriend pregnant a couple of years ago. They broke up, but I saw this bro and law and my little niece (a toddler now) this weekend as we are all up there for my dad in laws 50th birthday. The brother in law now has a new girlfriend, who also is also a young, unwed mother. It is neat how the Lord blessed them with this gift of their beautiful children, even though they did not follow His plan. I do not think those 2 are saved...but they did not follow His plan but He rewarded them... (children are a reward, the Bible says)

For those who are saved, there is Grace through the blood of Jesus, for all sins, including sexual sins. The Bible is clear on that. Yes, maybe there are consequences, but the Lord forgives and restores...

<3, BunnyJust a Bunny learning everyday what it means to Love and Live Harmoniously with a Fox

But if you tame me then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.~TLP

Hmmm, I guess I took it differently. To me the point was that being sexually indulgent now can cause problems in your marriage later. Not because that was what God wanted, but because that can be the natural consequences of sex outside of marriage. And CAN be, not has to be.

Or, at least, what *I* am trying to say is, we should always encourage people to not have sex outside of marriage because that is God's law. And it can help people to understand the why of this when you point out that for many people sex outside of marriage causes problems that they have to overcome later.

BUT, if someone falls, there is no need to despair. Our God is big enough to forgive any sin. And yes, you may have some natural consequences to overcome, but our God is powerful enough to help you overcome them.

Marriage is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash. It's better to avoid a stumble, of course, but this is a long race and even someone who stumbles can come back and win.

^^ Correct. I should have said the article titled it that. The point is though that the premise of this is:

Is it true that if A happens, B happens too?

If we want to discuss do some portion of marriages have struggles because of premarital sex, that is a different topic with a different title. It is not the topic of asking if A results in B where B=ruined (destroyed beyond repair). The title here actually suggests (assuming the answer is "yes" to that question) that two who slipped up and repented should just throw in the towel and not get married ever because their action has ruined their future marriage already.

Should we teach people to obey God's commands about this? Yes. Have we allowed this sin to be one that is too often "accepted" as "okay"? Yes.

Is it true that A leads to B? Not necessarily. And, we know that the inverse--which is an implication of this approach--is also not true. We have multiple people here on TMB where A didn't happen and the marriage started with serious issues.

So, where does this leave us? It leaves us trying to help God out with a marketing campaign--something He really doesn't need. God have us instructions. We are to follow them whether we see their benefit or not, and Hebrews 1:6 says that we must believe that they do benefit us--regardless of what we see.

Scripture does tell us that we reap what we sow, but that is often mistaken to be more specific than it is. If I by doing X, I may reap from that sin directly or indirectly. It's not valid to say that a specific result of X will be what I reap.

The title here actually suggests (assuming the answer is "yes" to that question) that two who slipped up and repented should just throw in the towel and not get married ever because their action has ruined their future marriage already.

I don't think the title "assumes" any such thing . . . unless a question comes with an assumed answer. I also think that "sexually indulgent" can mean a whole different thing from "We once got carried away and felt under each other's clothing." To me it suggests savoring, delighting in sexual sin, and likely engaging in it promiscuously. Yes, there is forgiveness, but I don't think it's true that we can choose habitual, serious sin and shrug off any consequences and presume on God's forgiveness. We may not have visible consequences, but we are playing with fire.

Interesting side note, though: On these boards we do seem to accept the premise "Sexually molested now, marriage ruined later."

An article that poses a cause and effect question either presumes that the answer is yes or no or is presenting a hypothesis to spurn research toward one of those two answers. This article doesn't appear to be the latter, and it certainly doesn't seem to be presuming a "no" as an answer.

As for your side comment, I don't believe that is true. On TMB, we frequently hear a call for counseling to deal with the issues of many things--including CSA, premarital sexual sin, etc. Such a call presumes that the situation isn't ruined. If it is a hopeless cause (something that is unbiblical) then such counseling (or depending on the circumstances support groups, and repentance where appropriate) is of no benefit so why bother. The very existence of this call to address the situation says it can be addressed. A "yes" answer to the OP says, "This can't be addressed."

Aside from whether or not we can talk about cause and effect in terms of sin, the actual cause of problems might not be what many assume it to be.

Job29Man wrote:So, are there other Christians here who were promiscuous before marriage and had hot sex then got married and had enduring sexual pleasure without years of disconnect?

poetess wrote:To me it suggests savoring, delighting in sexual sin, and likely engaging in it promiscuously.

The bits I've bolded above get at something that's been nibbling at me throughout this thread. There is an assumption that sex before marriage is hot and savory. I guess that's an assumption provided in the word "indulgent" in the title, but it it is wrong to assume that premarital promiscuous sex is automatically this way.

For some people, premarital promiscuous sex probably is hot and savory--but for me, this was far from the case. Sex was quick, uncomfortable, and was about the guy's sexual pleasure and never about mine. I know many women whose premarital sexual experience was closer to what I describe than it was to anything indulgent or hot. I had a great deal of guilt and shame about it, and the more I experienced those feelings, the more I felt unloved and unlovable--which sent me right back to some other guy to try to get him to love me. I never once felt like I was indulging in anything for me, and I never, ever delighted in the experience. It was a quest that rose from the desperation of a heart that heard rules before it truly heard God.

Leah wrote:Trying to address promiscuity with rules just does not work. It has to be teaching from the Bible to a person who is willing to receive it.

This ^^^ was what I needed--not Bible teaching about purity, but Bible teaching about God's love and grace.

Leah and SP nailed it. I, too. needed to hear that God extends grace. I did not hear the word grace said once growing up. I heard it in a song when someone died, that was it. How sad that we have a wave of generations hearing nothing near the truth. I was also told that I was not allowed to even touch the bible, for it was too sacred. Sad lies!

I don't like that word ruined. I think it is giving the wrong message, one of hopelessness, and its a message I have NOT heard being preached here most of the time.

When someone is sexually molested, there are scars, sometimes deeper and worse than others. But in any case, there IS damage. But we worship a powerful God who can heal damage and help people over the hardship and on into a wonderfully happy (and healing) marriage bed.

A story about my grandfather. He had a stroke and lost the use of the left side of his body for several hours. Even after he recovered the use of his left side again, his left arm and especially the hand was very weak. The physical therapist gave him exercises to do in order to strengthen the left hand. Now, apparently physical therapists are used to people not doing their assigned exercises, so much so that they will sometimes assign more than they want you to do in hopes that you will at least get up to the number of exercises you need to do before you quit. The problem is, my grandfather was not a typical kind of guy.

At the next visit to the therapists, they measured the strength of his hands and the therapist said, "We are making good improvement here, your right hand is almost as strong as your left now." And he was told, "It's the left side that had the stroke." The therapists looked back at his charts and said, "No, that can't be right, the left hand is stronger than the right, but, hmmm, yes, it does say the left side had the stroke. How many of those exercises were you doing?" And my grandfather replied, "Well, you said that doing X would be good for me, so I figured doing twice that much would be even better!"

Now let me be very clear, I am NOT telling the above story because I think someone who has been sexually molested should just "work harder" in order to recover. I am using it to illustrate that I think it is not only possible to heal from damage, but to become even STRONGER after the damage than you were before, when God is the one doing the healing.

Sex outside of marriage can cause damage. Sexual molestation can cause MUCH worse damage. And we certainly want to help people avoid that damage if we can. But I believe that we worship a God who is so Big, that he can not only help people recover from damage, but if we lean entirely upon Him, I believe He can help us to come out the other side of the problem even stronger and better than we were when we went in.

So our message to people who have not yet gotten into one of these potentially damaging situations should still clearly be, DONT!!!! But our message to those who have already been hurt should be one of hope in our glorious God, the great healer of all wounds! Not one of being "ruined"

We approach this topic--and others--too often without grace. Scripture leaves no room for hopelessness and no room for damage that can't be made as good as new. It says that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we can ask or think. The same God who inspired Paul to write that is the one who created us with vivid imaginations. I love how He does that sort of thing. He sets Himself up for a monumental task (more than we can imagine combined with a vivid and diverse imagination) and exceeds even that. To speak of "ruined" is to limit Him by our actions. That puts a limit on His grace and His glory. Not a good thing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that no one on here is arguing that the word "ruined" works. However, I'm a writer. I've written a few titles in my day--and I don't think that the person who wrote the headline was meaning to make a definite statement, either. If they had been, it would have been a statement. "Sexually Indulgent Now, Marriage Ruined Later" is definitive: The answer to whether marriage is ruined is yes. Put a question mark after that, and it becomes a question, something controversial, something to discuss, and the answer might well be no.

At the same time, we have all heard that couples who live together (thinking that they will "test" the marriage and have a stronger marriage) are more likely to divorce. And a girl who sleeps with the boy, thinking she's more likely to keep him, may well be just becoming "easy" in his mind. Those are stereotypes, but they have some basis in reality because they have often proven true. Sexual sin often has negative consequences, and a pattern of sexual sin can ruin a marriage. Is a marriage necessarily destroyed by sexual sin, no. Is it even usually destroyed if there has been sexual sin, I have no idea, but I would say that partly "it depends what that sin is." A spouse might forgive adultery, for example, but an unrepented pattern of adultery will destroy a marriage, even if the sinned-against spouse stays in the marriage. A pattern of sexual indulgence before marriage can be continued after marriage, or a homosexual affair comes to light, or an unknown child. Or the spouse who felt "pushed" into sexual sin before marriage, and doesn't see a repentant spouse after marriage, can have problems with sex after marriage. Any number of these can happen.

But, yes, all of these are secondary questions to the important ones, the theological truths: God is holy and He has the right to command us, God said no to sexual sin, God established a pattern for marriage and for sexuality, and God offers grace and forgiveness so that His repentant people don't have to see ruined marriages or lives.

Too often we are not seeing a big enough picture of God: We fail to see how great our sin against Him really is (and so we focus on human consequences instead) and we also fail to see how amazing His grace and forgiveness really is. Our sin does bring us to ruin; but His grace brings us out of it.

UGH, sorry padsnd. I was going back through this thread and found your questions to me that I somehow missed on the first time through.

padsnd wrote:I agree with almost all of what you are saying, but there are a few things that you aren't saying but implying that I don't believe are true (both biblically and experimentally). You say that different sins have different consequences and that sins may have multiple consequences, but you don't leave room for a particular sin--like this one--to have different consequences for different people or, more importantly, to not have an identifiable consequence in this life.

Poor communication on my part, because I do NOT believe that any particular sin always has the same consequence for everyone. And I not only believe, but have witnessed cases where God miraculously removed the consequences of sin. He doesn't always, but sometimes. Being sent to jail is a common consequence for theft, but by no means certain, for example.

padsnd wrote:The real problem though with this thread is the use of the term "ruined" though.

This thread has as had more discussion about the meaning of the word "ruined" than hormones. Most who discount the article are doing so more beacuse of a sensational headline than the scientific evidence presented. Some are insisting that "ruined" means damaged beyond repair. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ruined says "a state of complete destruction". But also says "to damage (something) so badly that it is no longer useful, valuable, enjoyable, etc." At any rate, no one is saying that anyone is beyond God's help if they only seek it. Substitute "damaged" or whatever you want, but please don't get distracted from the main topic of the book review because you don't like the author's choice of words or don't agree with every single point.

Bunny, the two articles you referenced: Bad teaching about sex is bad teaching about sex, whether it encourages promsicuity or discourages sex within marriage. (Even the second article is bad teaching. Nowhere does the Bible teach that single people should suppress their sexual desires. It's OK for single people to desire sex, and OK to masturbate.) The Church's historical anti-sex teachings has done immeasurable damage, arguably more than teachings encouraging promiscuity. In fact, the rash of promiscuity we are seeing today is caused in part by a backlash against false Christian teachings.

The good thing about both of these ladies is that they realize that they are damaged. That is the first step towards seeking restoration. Those that are truly ruined are those who do not realize their brokenness and think they do not have a problem, be it a spouse refusing to have sex with her husband and thinks this is normal, or someone who is living a promiscous lifestyle and thinks that there is nothing better avaiable to them.

jokerman wrote:I think marriage is made from a lot more elements than sex, so either question is ultimately beside the point. If we're asking "what will ruin a marriage?", good grief, the possibilities are endless.

DW and I were both virgins when we got married 28 years ago but all that does is inoculate us from a small set of problems related to jealousies or comparisons and whatnot. But it's not like our sexual abstinence helps us be better communicators, build empathy, hold our tongues or fill us with never-ending love more than someone else. That's why I really hesitate to prescribe it as some kind of elixir for the entire spectrum of relational challenges. I sure wish it counted for more, but it doesn't.

Maybe waiting DID help you communicate better. You were talking instead of having premarital sex. And let's not ignore the elephant in the room -- you didn't bring any STDs into the marriage. Genital herpes is pandemic, affecting about 15% of the adult population.

Jokerman, I feel this post and many others on this thread minimize the importance of sex. Yes, of course there are many elements in marriage besides sex. But sex is the defining act of marriage. It's about the only activity that God reserved exclusively for marriage. So of all of the endless possibilities that can bless or ruin a marriage, sex is in a category of its own.

We've always known that a purpose of sex is create strong bonds between a couple. Most people, even non-Believers, would agree that sex can cause emotional pain. Reasearch into hormones explains in part why this is, but it really isn't news. God made human sex to be so much more -- something that creates a deeply emotional, loving, spiritual, and meaningful relationship between a couple.

If sex were merely a way to have fun, then I'm quite sure that God would allow us to do it with anyone, just as most animals do. But He made it to be so much more. Sex ie either meaningful or it isn't. You can't have it both ways.

The scope of purity extends beyond minimizing possible difficulties in your marriage. Sure, you can overcome the damage done by sex outside of marriage. Sexual success in marriage is largely a matter of both people being generous with each other. If both spouses do the right thing, you are pretty much guaranteed a good marriage and sex life.

Our God is a fun God. As Jimmy Evans pointed out at his last conference, He put the first couple completely naked in a place called literally The Garden of Pleasure. Then commanded them to have lots of sex. It sounds like a steamy romance novel if there ever was one! We have the choice of great sex the way God intended, sex that he blesses, or having second-rate sex that He does not bless. Why settle for anything less?

Everything you ever wanted in life is just outside your comfort zone (Jamie Lee Curtis)